


Cover Me Like a Second Skin

by VerdantMoth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:22:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15429894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: “The stump needed humanity.”“We gave what we could spare.”“It was more than the stump should have needed.”“It was still less than what was offered.”“Only because you offered too much.”





	Cover Me Like a Second Skin

The Spark finds the beta-alpha when the world is dead and evening has closed curtains on the sun. When he is walking down Main Street past mannequins and locks, and the only places open are the ones a person has got to already know about to find. He finds him, and he is beautiful with his dark brows and stained-glass eyes and he hates him. 

Hates him, because he already knows him. Not much has changed in this stupid sleepy town. He ran away once, several years ago. They didn’t call it running away, when he joined the FBI, but that’s what it was. He isn’t sure if anyone else knew it, aside from the man in front of him.

The beta-alpha had called him, twice, two years after the Spark bolted. He didn’t say much, just asked if the Spark would considering coming home.  _ To deal with some nixies.  _ The Spark hadn’t come home, but he’d sent him three spells, dried frog tongue, and hazel roots. He’d also sent a jar of goat blood, but that was just out of spite.

He’d ended up in his Superiors’ office trying to explain his elaborate prank. After almost costing himself his dream job, he’d cut ties with everyone but his father.

The pack hadn’t let him go though, what tattered threads remained. The alpha and the coyote call him, quite frequently. He never answers. The fox flew out to see him once. She’d stood in front of his home for three days before the cops came out and she spooked. Thankfully the baby betas and the chimeras have left him alone, after he fired on the half-lizard.

The banshee never comes, and he is unsure if he is bitter or relieved about it. He’d hate to have to fire on her. Hate to watch his charms and his wards curl her skin and nibble at her spirit.

Wards can be such vicious things, when done properly. 

The beta-alpha nods to him and the Spark spits at his feet. “You sent the hunter after me.”  _ The hunter and his beta. _

The Spark can taste them in the air, all the creatures that have invaded this town. Nymphs and sprites, pixies and trolls, even an old god or two. They are not his problem anymore. He left this cursed town behind.

He tried too, anyway. Some days he feels it in his core. Like he could never completely leave this town behind.

The beta-alpha stares at him with wistful eyes. “You feel it to, then. The haunting.”

The Spark shakes his head. “No, no I got out. I left. I cleansed my self of this place.”

The beta-alpha snorts and it is such a strange sounds from the man that the Spark startles. Stained-glass eyes soften. “Much has changed since you left.”

“Not enough.”  _ Never enough. _

There is a stain on his spark, dimming what should be bright as day into a dying star. He knows this, like he knows his father’s eyes and the color of whiskey and the taste of smoke.

He once knew his pack too. Knew the screaming banshee with her fire-hair and knew the alpha-by-right who was his brother. He knew the fox that crackled and he once loved the coyote. How much must’ve changed that the girl he loved now loves his brother. That the girl he thought he loved now runs with fire.

“They miss you.”

“I do not miss them.”

The beta-alpha seems annoyed now. “You are here-”

The Spark raises a hand before he can speak his name. “Silence. You know the power of names, Once-Alpha.”

He doesn’t relish in the slapped look the way he thought he might’ve. The way he once would’ve. “I am here for my father.”

He lowers his hand and the beta-alpha snaps his jaws. “He is dying. And you feel it.”

The spark nods. His knees shake but he does not fall.

“I can save him.”

“Don’t you dare. You leave him human.”

The beta-alpha shakes his head. “We can break the door. More than shutting a barrier we will blow the bridge.”

“And at what cost?”

The beta-alpha doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The Spark heaves a great sigh. “He is not dying a supernatural death. He is old and his body is weak. I am to say goodbye to him, and that is all.”

The beta-alpha frowns. He opens, then closes his mouth and shakes his head. “No, no you could’ve come later to say goodbye. You came because this town is in your skin, under your clothes. You left, but you can’t escape.” He’s excited, frantic, and he steps close to grab the Spark. “You’re here, because you  _ have _ to be, the way I stayed because I had to.”

The Spark snarls, a vicious, all too human noise, and the air around him pops. It smells like magic and hatred but the beta-alpha remains unphased. 

“You’re here, because the haunting has followed you more than we have.”

“Can blowing the bridge really save my father?”

“Can it hurt to try?”

The Spark doesn’t have an answer, so he follows the beta-alpha to the stump. The stump that’s no longer a stump, but a strange, blooming mess of twigs and flowers and above-soil roots. The Spark scowls. “How many must we sacrifice to this beast?”

The beta-alpha shrugs. “Just two more, I hope.”

The Spark doesn’t miss the heaviness of his voice, but he doesn’t answer it either. 

Setting up the beta-alpha’s plan is surprisingly easy. A few runes carved into the stump, mountain ash barriers at three feet intervals, sticky, over-sweet herbs painted on to their skin. 

“Where’d you find this ritual, the Emissary?”

The beta-alpha snorts and raises a brow. “I bought it off of a witch in Georgia.”

The Spark throws his hands in the air. “And you trust her?”

“Nope.”

Before the argument can continue, the garden stump burst to life, and angry, thick force that wraps around them. It curls into the crook of the Spark’s neck, settles against his hips, whispers into the places he lets no one touch. He feels violated, and from the whines of the beta-alpha, he isn’t alone.

The Spark waits for wind to kick up around them, waits for the leaves to stir and the night to spin. It stays eerily still, only the occasional bird song or frog disrupting the quiet.

He feels it all at once, the hunger and demand. It builds in him, separates from him, curls against him. Consuming him.

A bridge, a door, a goddamned kitschy vase, he doesn’t care. He needs something tangible, something solid to shove against. 

He pushes at the beta-alpha as hard as he can, uses both his magic and his human strength to force him back. Each one is stronger than when he left, built up through rigorous practice and hard years.  The beta-alpha is startled enough that he lets himself be shoved back.

“What are you doing?” It comes out more desperate than the beta-alpha wishes.

“Can’t you taste it, what it wants?”

The beta-alpha shrugs, like it’s nothing. They do not break the silence with shrieks. Their whispers are already too loud.

“You didn’t tell me it wanted the last of our humanity.”

“Just one; I’ve already offered mine. For this town, for my pack. For you.”

The Spark swallows his outrage and it glints off his skin like currents. “You knew all along what it wanted. You knew what you were offering when you asked this of me.”

“Yes.” The Beta-Alpha doesn’t look at all guilty or cowed.

The Spark’s currents ripple it dull colors, angry and pulsating, dripping off him. “And you were going to just give it up, without any warning.”

“I told you when you left I’d make it safe for you when you chose to return.”

The Spark turns his magic on the blue-eyed wolf, throws him as hard as he can past the putrid garden growing from the stump. Thick vines snap out, snagging the Beta-Alpha.

“I don’t want it, not at the risk of you!” Already incandescent vines wrap themselves around the wolf and tri-colored blooms grow in the empty spaces of his limbs. Black-tar roots seek to wrap around his throat, his torso and bind him to the tree as leaves cover his mouth.

The Wolf bites through them, wincing at the bitter taste. “I wasn’t aware you cared for me.”

The Spark raises his hands and energy, vibrant and red, winds like an axe between them. He slings them down and the ground cracks, loamy dirt flying up into the air. Again and again he beats his power into the ground, all the while vines and blooms and roots struggle for a grip on the wolf.

“Fight back, dammit!”

The beta-alpha doesn’t. He lays there, like the sharp grass is a plush mattress, like the ice-thorns are knitted quilts. 

“Fight back, please!”

The Spark scrambles on top, uses human hands to rip at the foliage and begs. “Does your pack even know? Please, for me, fight!”

The Wolf offers a pained smile as slimy tendrils of grey-green root wrap around his throat. He tries to speak but there's no voice.

The Spark is losing the Beta-Alpha, and he knows it. So he does the only thing he has left to offer. He lays himself along the Beta-Alpha and shoves, as hard as he can, with all the force left in him. The stump is greedy, doesn’t care which of them offer, and it wraps them both in rotting limbs and poisoned flowers, until they are nothing more than a strange growth on an old stump.

Morning breaks, quiet and lazy and soft. There’s no rustle in the forest, no shifting or sound or movement. The town stirs, aware of the tension in the air, but unsure about the quiet. A pack moves swiftly, howling and calling, but the banshee doesn’t scream, so they feel safe.

The day slowly slinks forward, a cat who has the mouse but doesn’t want the game to end.

Night returns, unnaturally black a void. In the center of the forest, a single glow, red and blue and gold, woven like a single braid. It stinks here, like rot and decay and fungus, around and empty shell where a husk sat only hours ago.

The pack finds the Beta-Alpha first, half-feral with blood on his fur, carnage in his teeth. They find the Spark, not far, his eyes haunted and dead, his body naked and covered in silky, strange colored leaves.

The Spark doesn’t speak to them, just walks to the Wolf and sits before him, unafraid of the snarling and the snapping. The Wolf doesn’t harm him though. The Wolf knows what monsters exist in the boy. The boy too, knows this wolf isn’t feral. Not around him. 

It takes weeks, months, years, to rid the town of all the infection that had seeped in. Years in which the Spark and the Beta-Alpha struggle to remain human. Struggle not to add to the blood that lines the street. They claw and fight, tooth and nail and magic, and they only feel human when they are curled around each other.

 

_ “The stump needed humanity.” _

_ “We gave what we could spare.”  _

_ “It was more than the stump should have needed.”  _

_ “It was still less than what was offered.”  _

_ “Only because you offered too much.”  _


End file.
